Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2006 13:50:18 -0500

From: Geoff Mclay

Subject: Intellectual History of Commonwealth tort or torts

Colleagues – I am currently beginning to write up a paper on Salmond on Torts. Last we ran a conference to honour the 100 year anniversary of his appointment as the first Law Professor at Victoria.

As part of the project I am examining his rather conservative views about the nature of torts (he didn’t believe in a single principle of liability and opposed negligence as a generalized tort) that might be recognized by many on this list as a kind of "corrective justice" - he disagreed in the politest possible, and most devastating, way with Pollock on this. Ideally what I want to do is to place him with an intellectual history of tort law. I am, of course, very aware of the White book on US tort law and the scholarship in the US on Holmes' torts theory (whatever that was!), and the original English debates in the LQR and the like, but have struggled to find a generalized history of English/ commonwealth tort). I am thinking that I must be looking for the wrong thing, or looking in the wrong place (and perhaps the best stuff is the work on the history obligations – but as some of you know I am not that convinced that tort is, or torts are, really part of the law of obligations) , and was wondering if any one out there might be able to suggest a good starting place --- I was think that such a history might make a good project in itself ….

All suggestions welcome.

Geoff

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